Image: Feedback Female Film Festival
Direct Positive
Direct Positive
A new Milwaukee-made short film, “Direct Positive,” recently received the audience award for Best Documentary at Los Angeles’ FEEDBACK Female Film Festival.
“Direct Positive” was produced by TEMPO, a Milwaukee organization dedicated to furthering local women in professional roles, and the Milwaukee-based Bader Rutter creative agency. “Direct Positive” focuses on more than a dozen local women who have had an impact on the city, including a Black marketing executive and a trailblazing attorney. “Direct Positive” debuted at this year’s Milwaukee Film Festival.
“It’s more critical than ever that a diverse group of women are in every room where important decisions are being made,” says the film’s codirector, Sarah Kmet-Hunt. “That’s why it’s so gratifying to see the film gaining an audience across the country, and to hear the feedback that its message really resonates. I hope it will inspire women everywhere to have the courage to show up as their true, authentic selves, and to make their voices heard.”
With Jess Ayala conducting the interviews, the women featured in “Direct Positive” sat for portraits by photographer Margaret Muza. The onetime Pfister artist-in-residence is known for using photographic processes from over a century ago. She made striking tintypes, thin metal sheets coated with emulsion, and developed them in a dark room, endowing “Direct Positive” with unusual visual interest.
Muza says. “I had my 8x10 camera from 1902 and my portable darkroom set up to one side of the room opposite to where they told their stories. It was really special to get to listen to each person's story after I took their picture,” Muza says.
Over two days of interviews and portrait-taking, the TEMPO women shared their stories of overcoming obstacles, including lingering attitudes on race and gender. “At TEMPO, we like to say that ‘the world moves when women rise.’ ‘Direct Positive’ features a chorus of strong women’s voices sharing how they’ve risen above all obstacles to move the world toward a better future for all,” said TEMPO’s President and CEO Jen Dirks.
